Today with the highly developed information technology, the traditional printing industry has undergone tremendous changes. Commercial printing has encountered technical bottlenecks and its market has been gradually eroded by digital printing. Packaging printing has been valued by more and more people due to its convenience and environmental protection characteristics. , Packaging short order printing and "time-sensitive" production are increasingly being talked about. Short order printing means more preparation time and higher operating costs. The following figure shows the main problems faced by traditional printing:
From the above figure, we can see that transfer order time, operating cost, short order quantity, and material loss are the four main problems faced by traditional printing, and how to deal with the above thorny problems has become a topic faced by major suppliers. ESKO proposes to solve these problems by implementing Equinox (over-color) extended color gamut printing technology. Extended color gamut printing originated from high-fidelity printing, and its concept was proposed as early as the late 1990s. Hi-Fi Color Printing is relative to four-color printing. It is improved by adding red, green, blue, orange and other color inks on the basis of C, M, Y, and K four-color printing. The reproducibility and authenticity of printed colors. Let's make an image metaphor. The fixed ink color group is regarded as a palette. The original "CMYK" four colors have now become "CMYKOGB" seven colors.
High-fidelity color separation technology is the foundation of high-fidelity printing and a key guarantee for printing quality. After adopting the high-fidelity printing process, the manuscript will be multi-color separation. At present, most of the high-fidelity applications are only for color image printing, and ESKO Equinox (over-color) truly achieves both images and graphics, and ultimately can be converted to seven colors. The predecessor of ESKO's wide color gamut printing solution was Barco's dedicated multi-color separation software Ink Switch, which can support high-fidelity color printing technology and various special ink formulations. In 2002, ESKO launched Equinox on the basis of Ink Switch to further improve the color conversion effect of the product based on its technology. After more than ten years of successful use, it has become a more mature wide color gamut solution. Let's take a closer look at the main content of Equinox's solution:
It is not difficult to see that it covers printing standards, process guidance, sample collection, color separation management, printing guidance, and digital proofing matching. Through the implementation of a large number of customers, we have accumulated rich practical experience and made the entire operation process More fluid.
We use the case data of an actual customer to illustrate. Through sample collection and measurement, we get:
We regard the four-color printing color gamut space as 100%, and after adding "OGB", the color gamut space reaches 168%. The expanded color gamut space can make more spot colors achieve good matching.
From the conversion data point of view, using the standard ISOcoated_v2 color gamut space of "CMYK", the matching degree of Pantone Solid Coated's spot color is 54%, and the matching of colors containing ΔE<2 is 65%, and the average ΔE is 1.84; while using "CMYKOGB" "After seven-color printing, the matching degree of Pantone Solid Coated's spot color is 79%, and the matching case with color containing ΔE<2 is 88%, and the average ΔE is 0.75.
After completing the above data collection, we have reached the final application link. We have already said that ESKO Equinox (Overcolor) truly achieves both images and graphics, and finally can be converted to seven-color wide color gamut, so wide color gamut conversion is mainly Divided into two parts to complete the image and graphics. As our operating habits are mainly done in Photoshop, so naturally there is Equinox Photoshop Plug-in. Different from other image color gamut expansion color separation software, which is similar to the "black box" color separation mode, Equinox is completely open and controllable for the color separation of the image. We can set different settings according to the application requirements of different printing processes of the image. In order to achieve the best printing effect, please see the following example: In
the detailed adjustment of the figure below , we can use the 8 built-in parameters to convert data, and we can also use custom parameters to adjust the data of each channel of OGB separately. Through printing, the saturation of the image can be improved to achieve the desired effect.
Equinox (Yi Cai) for graphic applications is mainly completed on ESKO Package (Packaging Century) or ArtPro, these products are professional finishing tools. We can use it to open different pre-press software formats for editing and checking and finally achieve the purpose of printing and publishing requirements. Equinox Package Plug-in is designed to separate the images (call the setting parameters of Equinox Photoshop Plug-in) and graphics (multi-spot colors) in the manuscript into seven-color space at the same time. Please also see the following example:
Let's take a very simple client file, which consists of CMYK plus 6 spot colors, and there are 10 colors in total. We use ESKO Package or ArtPro to open and convert, the interface is as follows:
We have already known before that the wide color gamut space after printing collection has a good match to the spot color library, and what we have to consider during the actual conversion is the actual printing conditions. Equinox has fully considered this for you. First of all, we can match the spot color data with no more than 4 colors at most. We can also reduce it to 3-color matching or 2-color matching according to actual needs (at the expense of a little color difference) To improve the stability of printing), as well as the conversion of light net and dark tone, and whether the two heavy feeling colors of K and B appear in a color separation strategy at the same time. A series of practical applications can completely guarantee our conversion through the above settings. The later data can be printed and reproduced normally.
The final file is reduced from the previous ten color plates to seven color plates. Of course, what we are most concerned about is the before and after conversion effect comparison, as shown in the figure:
We compared the color difference before and after conversion and found that Equinox (overcolor) reduced the color version while maintaining the color consistency to the maximum.
Through the application of Equinox, their operating methods have also changed. Products that originally needed to be printed separately can now be combined (to achieve a seven-color combination), which greatly improves the efficiency of production.
Equinox (Overcolor) wide color gamut printing solution enhances the color gamut space of the image through the addition of OGB ink, which can more truly reflect the effect of the original picture. At the same time, the increase of the color gamut space matches the spot color effect It becomes simpler, and it is a powerful tool to solve the problem of multi-spot color printing for enterprises, and it can truly achieve both images and graphics. We hope that through the application of Equinox (Yi Cai), the production efficiency of the enterprise will be improved and the rapid development of the enterprise will help!